Examination of Witnesses (Questions 624
- 639)
WEDNESDAY 5 MARCH 2003
RT HON
GEOFFREY HOON
MP, MR SIMON
WEBB CBE AND
AIR MARSHAL
SIR JOCK
STIRRUP KCB, AFC
Chairman
624. Secretary of State, welcome. I noticed
when you came in you had your very powerful mid-field behind you
who we met quite recently on one of our visits. Thank you for
coming and meeting us for the second time in a couple of weeks.
We are considering the SDR New Chapter, but before we start perhaps
you might like to make an opening statement, Secretary of State.
(Mr Hoon) Thank you for giving me the
opportunity to give evidence today on the New Chapter to the Strategic
Defence Review. I am accompanied by Simon Webb, the Policy Director,
and Air Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup, Deputy Chief of the Defence
Staff for Equipment Capability, both of whom you know very well.
To me September 11 was one of those days when everyone will be
able to remember where they were. That day al-Qaeda gave reality
to what had hitherto been largely a theoretical discussion about
the impact of asymmetric warfare in the post-Cold War world. Asymmetry,
of course, is not new. Throughout history we have sought to exploit
our strengths and an opponent's weaknesses, and vice versa. Terrorism
has always been asymmetric. What September 11 demonstrated was
not a new asymmetry but that our adversaries had developed the
will and the capability to be actively hostile on a scale and
with a reach we had not previously anticipated. It demonstrated
that international terrorism could pose a strategic threat to
international security. The challenge for us and for our friends
and allies is to deny our adversaries the means, and find ways
of exploiting their vulnerabilities. Military force is one strand
of meeting that challenge. That was the focus of the New Chapter.
Its scope was therefore, by definition, limited. It was not a
re-examination of every aspect of defence policy capability. It
was an analysis for the Armed Forces of international terrorism
at the global strategic level. The New Chapter confirmed that
the Armed Forces had an important role in combatting this threat,
but neither Government nor the Ministry of Defence believes that
there is a specific military solution to the wide-ranging problems
of international terrorism. There are therefore a number of issues
which go beyond the New Chapter: the difficulty of ever achieving
absolute security at home; the importance of tackling the causes
of international terrorism; the limitations of armed force as
an instrument of counter-terrorism strategy, and the key roles
for the intelligence and law enforcement agencies. It is this
multiplicity of elements which makes international terrorism a
political and practical challenge. At the same time, the New Chapter
demonstrated that the contribution which the Armed Forces could
make to countering international terrorism fitted well with the
trends identified by the Strategic Defence Review. We needed to
do more of some things and to do some things better, but we did
not need fundamentally to restructure our Armed Forces. At the
strategic level, the New Chapter reached three broad political
conclusions. Firstly, that the Government should be ready and
willing to use military force overseas for counter-terrorism when
non-military means had failed. Secondly, force could be used against
terrorist organisations and supporting states; and thirdly, military
operations could contribute to any or all of prevention, deterrence,
coercion, disruption and destruction. At the next level, the New
Chapter came to the conclusions that: we needed to adjust the
capabilities and posture of the Armed Fores for counter-terrorism;
we should be able to operate further afield, possibly with less
host nation support; we had to have sufficient critical enabling
capabilities; we should aim to achieve knowledge superiority over
terrorist opponents; and we should be ready to counter the use
of chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear means by terrorists.
Finally, the New Chapter working groups have identified ten broad
areas for capability improvements and a wide range of associated
detailed options. When I announced the publication of the New
Chapter in a statement to the House on 18 July last year, I described
SR2002, the settlement which underpinned it, as "a mandate
for accelerating the modernisation and evolution of the Armed
Forces". Publication of the New Chapter White Paper was the
start and not the conclusion of this exercise. We always intended
to use the Department's normal planning process to determine exactly
how best to allocate additional resources from Spending Review
2002. There are two reasons for this: firstly, whilst the New
Chapter was focused on the implications of international terrorism,
the roles and commitments which drive other core capabilities
of the Armed Forces remain. We need to maximise the value of new
investment by seeking improvements with utility beyond counter-terrorism.
Our work so far does not suggest any fundamental mismatch between
the capabilities needed to meet the New Chapter intentions and
those needed for many other types of operations. Indeed, the central
New Chapter concept of network-centric capability will have application
to most types of operations and in the long term may drive fairly
fundamental changes in the doctrine and structure of the Armed
Forces. Second, given the limited time available, not all of the
options generated by the New Chapter work have been costed as
precisely as we routinely require when compiling our forward plans.
The planning process is in full swing and will continue for some
time. My aim, as I have previously told the House, is to reach
decisions and present them in the next general Defence White Paper.
I had hoped to publish this before the summer recess but, realistically
in light of the current situation, I now envisage that it will
appear in the Autumn. In the meantime we are getting on with a
number of important organisational changes to improve our capability
to respond to the threat from international terrorism. One of
the New Chapter's innovations was a decision to give the Volunteer
Reserves a civil contingencies role, as part of a possible request
for assistance from the civil authorities. We are not creating
a separate or self-contained force for this purpose. We are giving
an extra role to existing Volunteer Reserves by allowing them
to volunteer for the 14 regional civil contingencies reaction
units. This provides a source of manpower to give commanders another
option if the Armed Forces are asked for help, but it does not
mean that these Reserves will always be called out or that regular
units will not be used. We were also using Reserve posts to improve
the mechanisms for contingency planning, liaison and command and
control. They are essentially reinforcing what exists already,
not creating a new or separate civil contingencies chain of command.
This, I hope the Committee will accept, is indicative of our general
approach: to take the best of what we have and to build on it,
or adapt it, to meet security challenges which are both enduring
and constantly evolving. Thank you for that opportunity.
625. Thank you very much. You referred in your
introduction, Secretary of State, to the ten questions that you
posed that would have to be answered. Can you tell us how many
of those ten questions have been answered and if there are any
more and which ones you have dropped? It is a difficult question
to ask you without consulting your team, but it would be helpful
if you could tell us.
(Mr Hoon) If you want me to go through them point
by point, I can do that with notice, but I think what is important
is that these capabilities are evolving, they are issues that
we need to address, some of them in the very short-term. I have
talked already about the kind of adjustments we are making in
relation to the use of domestically-based members of the Armed
Forces, but some will take many years to resolve because of the
long timescale needed, for example, to implement network-centric
capability. That is something which, by the time that we are in
a position to say we have achieved it, will no doubt be something
quite different from what we have anticipated given the pace of
technological change. What I want the Department to do in a sense
is to embrace a recognition, which I think the SDR set out very
clearly, that in a period of permanent change we have to adjust
our capabilities and postures accordingly.
626. It might be helpful if at some stage in
the fairly near future someone could go over the exercise in order
to be able to say we have done it completely or we have added
a few more.
(Mr Hoon) I am certain we can submit to the Committee,
if it is helpful, a memorandum of where we have got to and where
we are going. I am not in any way resisting that. I just hope
the Committee will be realistic and recognise that these are not
aspirational, but they are areas of change that, as I indicated
with my example of network-centric capability, are never actually
going to be realised—and never actually going to be at a
point of delivering—precisely, because by the time we reach
that stage the requirement will have moved on.
627. It seems to me the intellectual effort
and the time spent on producing the New Chapter has taken almost
as long as the original SDR. Why is that the case?
(Mr Hoon) I do not know whether anyone has assessed
the number of hours. I doubt that that is true from what I know
of the SDR process and both gentlemen on either side of me were
much more engaged in that than I was because the Lord Chancellor's
Department did not figure highly in the SDR work at the time.
Nevertheless, the work for the SDR embraced every part of the
Ministry of Defence. The New Chapter work was necessarily more
constrained. Certain parts of the Department nevertheless were
fully engaged in that. Simon, I do not know if you want to add
to that, seeing as you are the Policy Director.
(Mr Webb) I think the SDR was started almost immediately
by the new Government in May 1997 and was published in July 1998
and the New Chapter was started by you in about October 2001 and
published in July. Two things were different: only a segment of
the Department worked on the New Chapter, particularly in the
policy area and then particularly in Air Marshal Stirrup's area,
whereas the SDR covered the whole of the Department; secondly,
we had a consultation phase during the New Chapter which was somewhat
different in style from the way consultation was done in the SDR
which just added some time to it. It was just different.
628. Have you been satisfied with the way the
exercise has been undertaken and with what you regard as the output
so far?
(Mr Hoon) Yes. I think in each stage of these processes
the Department does learn something. One of the things that we
were keen to do was to emulate the consultation process that had
taken place during the SDR and I think we were able to do that.
I suspect that a similar exercise conducted in the United States
would expect to receive far more comment from think-tanks, from
organisations with a deep but long-standing interest in defence.
Whilst there are clearly organisations in the UK who will comment
and are prepared to submit evidence to inquiries of this kind,
I believe that we could use more outside expertise to build up
the picture and to contribute to these kinds of discussions. Nevertheless,
I was still very pleased at the willingness of people to give
evidence and to participate in the seminar that was arranged to
try and involve organisations that perhaps had not previously
felt they had got a direct interest in defence policy.
629. I am sure that will give a green light
already to policy institutes, at least four of which are represented
here.
(Mr Hoon) I was looking around the room to see if
I elicited some smiles of support.
630. We would like to be a little bit more involved
in the process too, Secretary of State.
(Mr Hoon) You have every opportunity.
631. When you were not engaged in the original
SDR one of the issues that we were rather concerned about related
to the foreign policy baseline. We have a few questions on this.
In what ways was the foreign policy baseline of the original SDR
changed to reflect the challenge of asymmetry?
(Mr Hoon) I think the most significant adjustment
that has been required relates to a military threat to the territory
of the UK. In July 1998 it was still conventional wisdom that
there was no direct threat to the territory of the UK. The events
of September 11 2001 changed that in a way and in a sense that
we are still working through. The most recent announcement from
the Home Secretary was a further indication of the need to be
constantly vigilant about threats to the UK. As already has been
the case and I have indicated, that will have some implications
for the organisation of defence in response to that, but I do
want to stress again that this is an across Government response,
not simply defence providing the solution for the protection of
the UK. I think it must be the case in the mind of anyone who
thinks about defence in the UK that that fundamental change has
had to be recognised in the way in which we go about doing our
job.
632. Mr Webb, who wrote the classic bureaucratic
analysis, "For the first time in a generation there is no
known threat to the UK"? Did you write it? Do you think you
probably did not get it quite right?
(Mr Hoon) Collective responsibility, Chairman. I think
it was Lord Robertson!
(Mr Webb) I am afraid I only did the acquisition bit,
Chairman. I do not know the answer.
633. I have scored a direct hit there anyway.
(Mr Hoon) Unfortunately none of the targets is present.
Mr Jones
634. I know when Mr Webb was before us last
time and we were talking about the New Chapter he said that foreign
policy was crucial to the New Chapter. Will you be publishing
the baseline that the Chairman referred to and the amendments
that have taken place to foreign policy when you produce the New
Chapter?
(Mr Webb) We did not rewrite the baseline in that
sense. What we did was to involve the Foreign Office in the working
studies because I felt a team approach to what felt like a new
challenge was actually a bit more useful than just asking the
Foreign Office to write something and for us to respond to it.
So they came and joined in is the answer. I do not think that
there was a new foreign policy baseline in that sense. As part
of the process of getting towards the White Paper we will probably
consolidate the two, the work we did on the New Chapter and the
original foreign policy baseline into a single overseas context-type
piece, but we have not done that yet.
(Mr Hoon) The other big change is that although we
tried hard in producing a foreign policy baseline with the Strategic
Defence Review, the truth is an attack that can manifest itself
on the streets of New York and Washington from as far afield as
the mountains of Afghanistan means that the attempt to delineate
in the future where threats might arise is going to be even more
difficult than it ever was. In the end, what you are saying is
a threat could come from any quarter of the world and we have
to be in a position to deal with it.
635. I accept that. Certainly in terms of the
overall foreign policy of this country, the Foreign Office clearly
really have a view of what it is. In terms of the new thing we
are into in terms of possible action in different parts of the
world, surely that has an impact on our foreign policy in terms
of diplomacy and other things.
(Mr Hoon) Bearing in mind the idea of the Strategic
Defence Review was that it was foreign policy led, that is that
we looked at what clearly were the foreign policy interests of
the UK but seen through the perspective of a Ministry of Defence
whose job it is to provide the military resources to be able to
respond to threats to the UK's interests, then that assessment
was made in the SDR. I accept that it has had to be adjusted in
the light of what happened on September 11 because we made assumptions
about where those threats were most likely to arise and unfortunately
did not include Afghanistan, but we were not alone in making that
assumption and it is something that we will have to deal with
in the future. What I am really saying is that it is a matter
for the Foreign Office to work out the foreign policy implications
of what went on. In terms of the defence implications, which is
our job, what we were trying to do was to try and make an assessment
of what are the practical consequences for the organisation of
our Armed Forces. I can say is that the practical consequence
is that, wherever a threat arises, frankly anywhere in the world
these days, we have got to be in a position to deal with it, which
is not, in terms of foreign policy baselines, all that helpful.
Mr Hancock
636. We tried to get to the bottom of this last
time. What were the Foreign Office's main policy changes that
they wanted to see you accommodate? Be specific for us. They must
have said from now on our top three priorities in foreign policy
where we would want defence to have an input are these. Successive
Members have tried to get that information.
(Mr Hoon) I have just answered that question.
637. I do not think you did, Secretary of State.
(Mr Hoon) If you will forgive me, I did because what
I am saying is that the process did not work like that. In the
period leading up to the publication of the Strategic Defence
Review it was clearer when defence was likely to have to respond
to that foreign policy baseline because the foreign policy baseline
itself was clearer and we set out in the Strategic Defence Review
that the UK's defence interests were most likely to be engaged
in Europe and the Middle East and made an assumption implicit
in that that they were unlikely to be engaged in places like Afghanistan.
September 11 changed that and what I am saying is that it has
made it far harder to be able to make that assessment about how
defence responds to that foreign policy background because if
an organisation like al-Qaeda can establish itself in Afghanistan
and provide training and organisation for its terrorist forces
then a similar organisation is capable of establishing itself
almost anywhere in the world and we have to be able to deal with
that wherever the threat arises.
638. Would you then agree, Secretary of State,
that there was not too much of a baseline to begin with?
(Mr Hoon) No. What I am saying is that there was a
perfectly proper baseline which was widely supported and approved
of not only in this country but around the world in the period
leading up to the conclusions published by the Government in the
Strategic Defence Review. It is in the nature of international
events that significant events like September 11 force us, which
is what the New Chapter is about, to reconsider those conclusions
and that is what we have done.
Mr Hancock: It is all a bit vague.
Mr Jones
639. When Mr Webb came before us on 16 October
he said you had various working groups working on the New Chapter.
One of the original questions you asked was how to "avoid
the use of force becoming our opponent's own recruiting sergeant".
I am just wondering where you are with that work and if, for example,
we have learned lessons from the recent deployments in Afghanistan?
(Mr Hoon) I think it is always necessary to make that
judgment before deciding to use force, after exhausting other
avenues, to resolve the problem and that essentially is some of
what we did before deploying troops to Afghanistan. Undoubtedly
there are some consequences of the use of force that could be
put on the debit side, but I have no doubt that the use of force
in Afghanistan was significantly beneficial not only for the people
of that country but for the stability of the international community.
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